The Internet Myth: Connection Quality and Speed (Europe vs US) *spawn*

[Silent_Buddha]

Other than a bunch of benchmark screenies, I didn't see anyone really talk about the situation of broadband availability for the masses here in the States.

To be blunt: we're too damned big to be good at giving broadband for everyone today. There are still significant portions of the United States that don't have cell phone coverage, and I'm talking the most simplistic dial tone functionality rather than data transmission.

The contiguous 48 states have a landmass that's one and a half orders of magnitude larger than the UK (3,800 thousand miles^2, versus 98 thousand miles^2), so our ability to run fiber and copper to the far reaches of Hillbilly Hole in Bumfuck, Nowhere runs into serious issues of ROI. Sure, you could drop some 100mbit fiber into every house for a zillion dollars, but there's no way to recoup those costs (and the related maintenance) in a meaningful timeframe.

Which is why the far smaller countries (S. Korea, Japan as prime examples) can have absolutely killer wired and wireless infrastructure and seem to continually be moving the goalposts forward -- because they have a tiny landmass in combination with huge population density. In the places where there is no population density? There probably isn't electricity, either, along with most other utilities.

That's true to an extent but those rural areas with absolutely zero broadband (wired or wireless) is likely around 1-3% (3-10 million) of the US population. Same goes for cell phone coverage. If you look at Verizon's or AT&T's coverage map there are large gaps but if you look more closely they are generally either very sparsely populated (towns with populations in the hundreds or tens) or unpopulated. The costs would be staggering to bring broadband to those locations which couldn't possibly be recouped in 50 years.

Our family ranch has no wired broadband service (we could pay to get lines installed and get service if we wanted, but it'd be expensive) but we have broadband internet available through cell coverage. And that goes for almost all the rural communities, farms, and ranches in the country.

The best thing about cell phone broadband in the "boonies?" No contention for bandwidth generally. The bad thing? Cell phone broadband data caps.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

our ability to run fiber and copper to the far reaches of Hillbilly Hole in Bumfuck, Nowhere runs into serious issues of ROI. Sure, you could drop some 100mbit fiber into every house for a zillion dollars, but there's no way to recoup those costs (and the related maintenance) in a meaningful timeframe.

This is (one instance of) where capitalism and the "free market" can't provide a working solution. As long as we chain ourselves under the yoke of The Almighty Profit Margin, there will always be a significant number of people who won't be able to enjoy the same access and privileges as the rest of us.

Also, it doesn't exactly help that the US comms industry is by any and all standards, an oligopoly. Hence, Joker's experiences in densely populated Los Angeles.

 

[Arwin]

The explanation is regulatory capture.

Govt. bought and paid for by the corporations who actually write some of the laws.

Or investors and CEOs that have as their prime goal to get as much profit from their investment, with no long term goals, because they'll just move their money when they've milked the cow.

This sounds cynical, but I've seen a report where this happens with US investment companies that buy daycare centers in the Netherlands, infusing them with some capital and then forcing them to turn as big a profit as possible by merging locations, etc.

 

[JPT]

They probably should put broadband under infrastructure, like roads, that way everybody get access and you pay to get it built through tax (bad word for most people, I know)
But you also need to define what is broadband and the minimum speeds, access model etc, so if a company wants to have more somewhere out in the desert, they have to pay for the upgrade. But joe average should be ensured to get maybe 10/10.

As for Joker predicament, I think we should also look at the usage model, the avg home user, does not have Joker's work requirements for broadband, so then its extra cost.

I do not have any updated numbers, but on average our ISP customers had about 3-5Mbps download as the link speed to customers, even though more was available, but people felt they did not need it and did not pay for it. This has probably gone up in the last few years, especially when people get higher speed as default through cable/fiber etc.

Same is the feedback regulators are getting from ISP's in EU. A EU directive with a goal of 50% of EU should have 100Mbps and almost everybody 50Mbps links, is not going as planned. Even if the ISP is able to offer the service, very few people actually buy it. So the regulators are looking into maybe dropping the numbers to be should have access to those speeds, if they want it.
Its mostly been done through VDSL2 (bundling + vectoring) and smaller amount of cable/ftth solutions, I argue that FTTH is a minor extra cost. But the german guys I spoke with last year argued differently, mainly because the last mile, when you connect a house building etc, is on private property. The cost of digging up private property and installation is high (for them at least) compare to reusing the copper wire from the curb into the building/house.
But here people want the fiber and actually dig through their own property so that the installation people can come and just lay the "tubes".

Its going to be interesting to see if G.Fast changes this in someway, last year I saw cost models that said G.Fast would be cheaper than FTTH deployment in larger cities like Amsterdam and deliver a few hundred mbps of connections.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This is the wrong forum to discuss the social and political issues affecting national services.

 

[joker454]

As for Joker predicament, I think we should also look at the usage model, the avg home user, does not have Joker's work requirements for broadband, so then its extra cost.

I'll admit my upload needs are probably more than most. However in the era of Skype, Twitch, Vine, etc, where people are video chatting or uploading videos to various places I'd say upload speed has become somewhat more important leaving 2mbps upload speed to be inadequate. The irritating part is that Time Warner Cable of course can provide faster speeds, but they don't since they are the only broadband available in that area. In other parts of the country where Google Fiber rolled into a town that Time Warner Cable server, Time Warner would then miraculously offer faster speeds. So Time Warner has a monopoly in certain parts of certain cities and hence they can do whatever they want there. Is the EU, Asia, etc the same way or are you always guaranteed at least two choices for broadband provider? That would basically solve the issue here if there was some form of competition, but in some places there just isn't. In areas where there is competition here broadband internet is very good.

 

[wco81]

It's unbundled service in most G7 countries. That means other ISPs can offer services on the same line, regardless of who laid it down.

The FCC in the last decade said if you build the infrastructure, you don't have to share, so when Verizon built out FIOS, it didn't have to allow other ISPs on it, whereas when they rolled out DSL on the copper on which they had a monopoly, they had to allow others to offer DSL service over those lines.

Well they were being given an effective monopoly, like right of way, to string fiber for FIOS. They cherry-picked the most lucrative zip codes and then stopped.

But in most cases, they would not roll out fiber in counties and states where AT&T was already operating. So they didn't compete with each other.

Now AT&T is holding up it's Giga service as a carrot, to allow it's proposed merger with Direct TV to go through. The stick is that they will lay off people if they don't get their way.

They pulled that shit when they tried to take over T-Mobile and was rejected.

Giga will be in cherry-picked zip codes and probably mostly in big buildings, rather than single residences.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I feel like I'm living in the dark age here in central London. I have a 20:1Mbps ADSL connection that is actually 18Mbps down (a little over 2Mb/sec). Fibre is gradually being deployed around me to the point that I check my telecoms provider (BT) provider every day to see if I can get it.Despite the fact that I've 'registered my interest' many times.

 

[Graham]

The problem MS would have faced isn't so much speed, it's data caps. Back in New Zealand, for example, my parents and brother have a large choice of services which are actually surprisingly decent performance (for a country in the middle of the ocean). It's not terrible cheap, but what kills it is the data cost - as most ISP's charge for the connection and then data blocks on top.
Simple example, Vodaphone (aka Telstra cable aka Clear) charge $40 for a 60GB block - while xnet (one of the better ISP's) charge ~$50 for 80GB, so an especially large game becomes nearly 50% more expensive due to download charges. Digital convenience!

While internet in the UK wasn't Terribly fast at least it was fairly consistent and reliable. My experience in the US (here and at friends) so far has been less so; sure speed test always says you are getting what the sticker says, but I've found the actual usable experience varies widely - for example I've definitely noticed massive quality/performance degradation in Netflix in the fairly short time I've been in Bend - 480 to 320p is utterly unacceptable frankly. Politics at work I guess, I do wonder how the ISP's would like the idea of large numbers of their users downloading 50GB games on a semi regular basis?

 

[Grall]

In Sweden, the only place you see data caps at all is on mobile cellular internet connections, thank goodness.

Also, no filesharing/video streaming throttling or such asshattery.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Data caps seem to have be removed from UK internet too, except maybe on the cheapest-of-cheap options.

 

[wco81]

That's interesting I don't recall exactly which countries but Pirate Bay is blocked in some European countries.

And ironically, isn't Sweden going after PB's founders?

 

[Grall]

Yes, because they're swedish nationals. However our society is not permeated by big business to the extent the US is for example, hence why ISPs aren't capping and throttling their connections and calling it a "feature"...

 

[wco81]

Yeah the Scandinavian countries have the lowest rates of corruption, something that the tour guide of the Parliament building in Stockholm cited.

They also talked about how one prime minister used an official credit card for purchases by mistake, putting on a charge of a few dollars and was ousted from politics.

That "misuse" of public funds for personal purchases figures into the plot of a Danish series called Borgen.

 

[novcze]

For your info: i'm on 250/15Mbps - UPC Cablecom Switzerland.

I have 120/12 Mbps - UPC Czech Republic and according to "My UPC" data log I downloaded some 12,89 GB in May, which is average figure for my use (PSN, youtube and web browsing).

 

[joker454]

However our society is not permeated by big business to the extent the US is for example, hence why ISPs aren't capping and throttling their connections and calling it a "feature"...

They don't cap them everywhere here, my internet is uncapped and I can get 500/100 speed if I wanted to pay for it at my house. Throttling here seems to be happening for Netflix but that's probably because Netflix is used much more here in the USA than elsewhere so it's taking up a sizable portion of bandwidth compared to say Scandinavia.

 

[Arwin]

Throttling Netflix could also be Netflix end of things? Otherwise would be illegal here I think. Personally I prefer bandwidth caps over throttling certain services, at least you have a choice that way, but right now I think most bottlenecks are still on the hosting servers primarily (like how I still almost never get max bandwidth from PSN)

 

[joker454]

Throttling Netflix could also be Netflix end of things? Otherwise would be illegal here I think. Personally I prefer bandwidth caps over throttling certain services, at least you have a choice that way, but right now I think most bottlenecks are still on the hosting servers primarily (like how I still almost never get max bandwidth from PSN)

There seems to be all sorts of finger pointing right now so who knows where the true bottleneck is. I did find this article though regarding North American bandwidth use:

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/netflix-youtube-bandwidth-usage-1201179643/

Considering how many different uses of the internet there are, that Netflix is using 34% of all bandwidth in prime time is quite a startling amount. So on the one hand while I don't agree with throttling, on the other hand I do kind of see a problem here where one entity is using the lions share of all internet bandwidth. That doesn't really seem fair, and without checks and balances it can lead to situations where a handful of big money companies ultimately monopolize all bandwidth use. It's also irritating for guys like me that don't use Netflix at all, making me wonder when access to my servers in New York is slow is it because of Netflix? I realize this is a touchy and complicated issue but to me if access to internet is supposed to be universal and shared, then it should mean shared and not 34% goes to one company and 66% goes to the remaining 100 million people.

 

[Scott_Arm]

But Netflix is only using that much bandwidth because users are streaming. It's not Netflix monopolizing Internet bandwidth. It's Internet users consuming bandwidth the way they want to.

 

[Grall]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS!